Leatherworking (A Review)

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Papillion
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Leatherworking (A Review)

Post by Papillion »

An analysis of leatherworking:

So! I am not hyper technical (as many of you wonderful people are) so do forgive my somewhat generalized synopsis. I shall attempt to give precise examples.

It has been one of my biggest grievances for a while that leatherworking is one of the most fun, yet difficult to establish abilities. I am unsure how profitable other professions are, but this one I have found some challenge in due to the fact you need many components to craft any piece.

Example!
Leather Cuirass
Skill(s) required: Leatherworking (200)
The following additional components are required to craft this item:
- a buckle (x3)
- a rivet (x6)
- a skein of thread (x2)

Let’s do a cost breakdown here.
Buckle – I believe that you can buy them at 150 in the market. You need three. (450)
Rivets – 11 riln per, 6, 66 riln
Thread – 10 riln per (if buying from market!), 2, 20 riln
Pelt – If you buy from market, I think it is 250 to 300.
SO COST ALONE: 786
This sells (at fine quality, because I didn’t take notes, I’m a bad person) – 1227 riln


Which, considering the steps to take to make this, which altogether would be AT LEAST an hour of play time… I dunno. It isn’t terrible, but compare it to (for example) the 1000 riln you can make running errands. You can do that once per hour, and requires little more than moving from here to there. Leatherworking requires many more steps, and much more time, and a profit is just about half that? It seems off balanced to me BUT MAYBE I JUST DON’T GET THIS ECONOMY.
NOW, if you hunt your own skin and stuff, you will clearly save. And you can make deals and what to keep costs down. But, let’s look at what happens with the upper crust items:
Scale Cuirass
- a skein of thread (x8)
- scales soft (x5)
- a buckle (x3)
- a rivet (x6)

Now, I haven’t found a definite accepted value for scales, but since they are difficult to gather, I am going to apply a cost of 150 per scale, since I’ve not had anyone offer to sell less (and in fact bought them at a higher price, I believe). So!

Thread – 80 riln
Buckles – 450 riln
Rivet – 66 riln
Scales – 750 riln
Pelt – 200 riln
TOTAL COST: 1546 riln
Market Value: 1605 riln

There is next to no profit margin AND THIS IS AT FINE QUALITY. Standard is less. This is very clearly not balanced, as it is barely more valuable than standard leather, but costs double to make.
Another example:
- some small plates (x3) – 100 per, 300 total
- a buckle (x4) 150 per, 600 total
- a rivet (x8) 11 per, 88 total
- a skein of thread (x4) 10 per, 40 total
Cost: 1328
Value: 2036

I’m going to be honest, making this makes me think I’m just whiny. BUT LIKE. When I was young and new, I found this very difficult. I suppose a factor of that was like. I bought out all the thread, and then found someone who sold it too me at ridiculously inflated value (I think it was like 30-40 riln per?). Which is fine. I am not against people making profit. I haggled down from higher price. I ended up finding something that made like… 100 riln profit every time, because that was the best I could at my level. Low investment, anyway. NOW, I have the money to buy everything in bulk and it is fine. And you definitely make profit.

Real world, you would expect to double the cost of your labor, is all, since it doesn’t account for time or skill. And some of the items do take a long time. Like… MANY, MANY STEPS. HAHAHAH.
What are other skills like? Am I just spoiled? That’s possible, I’m a bit of a primadonna.
But I just feel like you need so much per piece. On average, my time goes like this:
Buy pelts in bulk.
Tan pelts in bulk (8 at a time, takes about an hour?)
Start crafting (depends on what I am making, it can take from 10-30 minutes per).
If I hunt my own pelts, to save time, add that time to it.

Let’s do a ridgeleather evaluation.
- A buckle (x8)
- A rivet (x15)
- A skein of thread (x2)
- Ridgeleather solution
- Pelt
My cost breakdown for this piece (which are ridgeleather greaves)
- 1000 riln
- 150 riln
- 20 riln
- 200-300 riln
- 550 riln
So cost here is looking like: 1970
It sells for: 1,933 riln
So, here’s another issue. Hahah.

Leatherworking is a fun trade. I like it. I like how intricate it is. However, I definitely feel that the upper tier things should be balanced out.

Brigadine vambraces
The following additional components are required to craft this item:
- some small plates (x2)
- a buckle (x4)
- a rivet (x8)
- a skein of thread (x4)
Cost: 1070
Market value: 2941
This seems worthwhile. Though plate value hasn’t been really set, as far as I know. I think I valued them here at 100 riln.

Scale and ridgeleather prices I think should be considered for review! And maybe some of the standard ones, for the recipes that require more buckles and the like.
Keep up the fun game, everyone.
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Rias
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Re: Leatherworking (A Review)

Post by Rias »

Wow! I appreciate all the time that went into not only playing with the system and collecting the data, but into the presentation as well. I'm going to have to read it over a few more times and do some poking around in the code before I decide what to tweak and how much, but detailed and well-formatted feedback like this always makes the decisions and adjustments so much easier to make, so I really appreciate it. If any other leatherworkers (I know we haven't had many) have thoughts, please do chime in.

I will say that right now prices are mostly based on how many repeating steps are required for certain parts of the procedure, and of any components required for the item. I know there are parts of the leatherworking process that aren't currently accounted for, like time to acquire tannin or to process the raw pelts into usable leather, and probably the tracing/cutting time too. It's one of the older crafting systems at this point that hasn't ever received a serious overhaul since the Very Early Alpha Times, and so there are probably some other factors as well that should be considered when it comes to calculating the market value. TL;DR: I have no doubt that the value of leatherworking in general is lower than it should be at the moment.

I've also always felt that the tanning process in particular needs to have the length of passive downtime (waiting for things to dehair/tan) tweaked down a bit.

I'm glad to hear the process feels fun and interesting to go through. Sounds like we just need to get the finished product values in a better place, but if you end up recalling any parts of the process that are frustrating or annoying, feel free to bring it up.
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Papillion
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Re: Leatherworking (A Review)

Post by Papillion »

Glitches I noticed (or maybe I am inept, I accept my failings):
When making leather pieces, after making pelts into fur to make into fur, it reverted back to leather upon crafting. All of the fur pieces I tried to make did this. I am reasonably sure I followed the proper steps, but maybe I missed something. I am pretty sure I couldn’t ‘trace fur gloves’ for example. Confirmed: invalid recipe. So I would trace leather gloves onto fur, assuming it would become a fur glove on completion, but no. It was leather.

If I had any complaints about leather tanning, it is how long it takes to scrape them clean. This is the most time consuming and exhausting. When doing a set of 8 (my usual), I have to sit/walk around/kill time, so my character can recover and continue scraping things clean.

Also, I am glad this helps, I am sorry it is sorta clustered! And I am tired so may have started to ramble.
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Re: Leatherworking (A Review)

Post by Ansarian »

I'll chime in as on the large majority of things, I have spent at least between fifty and a hundred hours on blacksmithing. I have dipped my toe into leatherworking just to see how it functions so that I might assist others, and my observations on it are quite in line with this thoroughly detailed review of the process. As a blacksmith, I strive to provide all that I can to the market as it's needed but often I would be plagued by one request, "Please stock rivets and buckles please". This was after spending a good portion of time supplying what I felt was a good number of them to the amount of time it took.

That pressure could be alleviated by molds, but I do feel like those are quite limiting. A rivet mold holds only four rivets and a buckle mold holds an astonishing single component. Frankly, it feels faster to just hammer out the buckles instead of going through the effort of juggling the furnace to keep the metal liquidated while managing a single-item mold. If these were scaled up to hold more, I am certain that resources that are needed to do leatherworking would become more available to those looking to practice the craft.

I would like to suggest culling the amount of items that is needed to make the articles in question, but I honestly like the amount it takes- it feels organic and real. And never mind that removing some from the recipe would directly detract from the value of the completed product, landing us squarely at the beginning of the problem again. The most immediate issue I can see when I look at leatherworking is that it's base material is practically worthless. A large hide is worth only 150 riln regardless of whether it has been tanned or if it is raw.

To put it in a more condensed term:
1) Hide needs to be worth more as a base product. This would make the end product worth more and simultaneously encourage people to take up skinning as a profession even if they do not intend to leatherwork, thus increasing supply.
2) Items to do leatherworking need to be more available and making the associate molds related to it better would help to alleviate that issue.
3) Pottery probably does need a glossing over and a consideration placed on how much a mold should be able to hold versus the amount of the item needed versus other crafts.

By the way, I personally feel that the process of tanning a hide is good. It's only a few minutes per solution you dip it in and often you'll be doing other things at the same time so you'll barely notice.
I don't feel the same way about pottery as you can spend a decent amount of time gathering materials, mold it into shape and put it on the table and forget about it as it takes a long time to dry. (I have genuinely forgotten that I made molds.)
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Rias
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Re: Leatherworking (A Review)

Post by Rias »

Per the changelog: Scraping the fur from pelts is now an auto-repeating action. Progress made per repetition is influenced by the better of 100% of the scraper's Skinning skill or 50% of the scraper's Leatherworking skill.

It looks like I missed fur-scraping when I went on my crusade against giant single chunks of roundtime a while back, but this has finally been rectified! I lowered the base total RT for the process a bit, and the energy cost is less than the RT rather than matching it. More skill means more chances per repetition for quicker fur removal.
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Re: Leatherworking (A Review)

Post by Rias »

Per more of today's changelogs:

- Raw pelts have had their values adjusted up slightly.
- The value of processed leather/fur has been updated to A) be based on its base pelt component and B) better reflect the effort required to process and produce it. (This will also affect the values of leatherworked goods made from said processed leather/fur.)
- The value of ridgeleather items now compensates better for the required ridgeleather solution.
- The value of items with multiple components will now give a bit more compensation per component to better reflect the skill required to craft these complex multi-component items.

I think these changes should help ridgeleather items (and even regular leather items) feel a bit better when it comes to leatherworkers crafting and selling them to make a living. Do keep in mind however that the market does buy lower than it sells back to PCs for, so the more items one has to buy at the market to craft their item, the more it'll eat into their profits. That last changelog item was meant to help compensate somewhat for this and make it less likely to turn crafting an item with outsourced components into a loss.

As I'm sure some have noticed, I am not the best when it comes to the maths. Feedback is going to be extra appreciated with these updates. Please let me know if these changes do indeed improve the leatherworking-for-profit situation, if they have over- (or under-)compensated, and/or if they have shaken up the economy too much in some cases I may not have considered. (Handcarts have seen a price increase from that last changelog item, but nothing too crazy - I figure if they didn't go up too high, everything else should be fine.)
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Re: Leatherworking (A Review)

Post by Rias »

A few more points:

- Buckle casting molds can now be used to cast up to 4 buckles each.
- Rivets should probably be updated to be "some rivets" instead of being individual rivets and all recipes can then have their rivet requirements reduced, similar to what happened with nails a while back. (Same for buttons.)
- An FYI in the meantime: Rivets are for sale in general stores in infinite quantity. But yes, they -are- copper and I realize some people prefer iron.
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Re: Leatherworking (A Review)

Post by Rias »

One more major thing that got overlooked and needs to be done: minor components aren't storing or being priced for their quality. So buying fine-quality items (like the 150-riln buckles I assume you were using in your examples, @Papillion) are always going to be a significant loss when used as components of a larger finished product until I get that fixed, because as part of a larger product they're being priced as if they're average instead of fine. Unfortunately it won't be retroactive for products that have already been put together and the minor components used for, but I should be able to fix it for future multi-component crafting products.

(Please pardon the fact that it's not actually fixed yet as of this post - this post is serving as an explanation for others and a note to self for me.)
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Re: Leatherworking (A Review)

Post by nobody »

Rias wrote: Tue Jun 08, 2021 8:13 am One more major thing that got overlooked and needs to be done: minor components aren't storing or being priced for their quality. So buying fine-quality items (like the 150-riln buckles I assume you were using in your examples, @Papillion) are always going to be a significant loss when used as components of a larger finished product until I get that fixed, because as part of a larger product they're being priced as if they're average instead of fine. Unfortunately it won't be retroactive for products that have already been put together and the minor components used for, but I should be able to fix it for future multi-component crafting products.

(Please pardon the fact that it's not actually fixed yet as of this post - this post is serving as an explanation for others and a note to self for me.)
You might be basing your expectation of buckle prices on market data and metalworking is in a weird pricing place there. An iron buckle sells to the market for 105 riln (140 to buy) while a copper buckle sells for 7 riln (10 riln to buy). Buying a copper ingot from the market costs 100 riln and can make 8-10 buckles depending on how much gets eaten by the process. There just aren't that many people willing to sell copper buckles at the market price because its losing money (getting 56-70 riln from each 100 riln ingot, you'd make better riln and save time just selling the copper ingot back to the market for 75 riln, or even better not buying it in the first place.)

Edit: to clarify, the copper selling price is definitely too low, the iron selling price is probably too high.
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Re: Leatherworking (A Review)

Post by Rias »

Per recent changelogs:

- Items with minor components will now retain data pertaining to the quality of each minor component used in their construction.
- The value of items with minor components will now consider the quality of each minor component.
- The value of items with minor components will now consider the base material of each minor component.

This should help solve the issue of the vambraces made with fine-quality iron buckles being valued the same as vambraces made with average-quality copper buckles. Whew.

There may indeed need to be adjustments to how these base components are individually valued monetarily (particularly metalcastable stuff), but if this happens it will now automatically affect the value of multi-component items made from them.
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